Question

I’m in phpmyadmin right now and I am trying to set a field to stamp the current date when data is inserted.

Now I tried setting it to DATETIME type, but that includes time. I just want date. I also tried setting it to DATETIME with the default value to GETDATE() and saving but it threw an error:

#1067 - Invalid default value for 'upload_date' 

Anyone know how to do this please?

Answer 1

Unfortunately, you can’t set the DEFAULT value to a function, it needs to be a constant value. One exception is CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, although it will also include the time part:

column_name TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP

However, you can use a TRIGGER to set the column’s default value. For example:

CREATE TRIGGER trigger_name BEFORE INSERT ON your_table
  FOR EACH ROW SET NEW.date_column = DATE(NOW());

Also, use DATE() to truncate the TIME part of NOW().